


Grandfather Is Not A Mission Statement

by Merkwerkee



Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [33]
Category: Masters of the Metaverse
Genre: S5 E4, and neither does grandparenting apparently, parenting doesn't come with manuals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22854694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: Bruno tries to come to terms with having family
Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [33]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643020





	Grandfather Is Not A Mission Statement

Bruno pulled off the ragged suit jacket he’d put on and tossed it onto his cot before settling down beside it with a sigh. There was a certain timelessness to this place, where the sun never rose and it was daylight all the time anyway, but it still felt like the day had taken months. He felt every single one of his years weighing on him like he hadn’t for several months, mission after mission written in red ink and covered by black making him feel older than his joints ever had.

It should have been easy. It was the mission, after all, and it wasn’t like it would have been the first time Bruno had double-tapped a civilian in the service of the mission. Hell, it wouldn’t have even been the first time it’d been a clergyman. _Would have been the first time it was a Protestant, though_ , a morbidly humorous part of him suggested and he dismissed the thought as irrelevant. What was relevant was the look in Andi’s eyes when he’d made the suggestion.

She’d been deep in her avatar, near as he could tell, but he had always been able to see a pilot in their avatar - so far - and Andi’s reaction had mirrored Mary’s discomfort. It was that pinched, unhappy expression she’d worn for too long in the prison that had kept his gun in its holster, for all that forty and more years of operations were clamoring for him to achieve mission parameters as swiftly and efficiently as possible.

Bruno had always gotten the job done. Didn’t matter what the job was, though wetwork requiring stealth and honeypot missions had always been more the LT’s wheelhouse than Bruno’s, he’d see the job through as economically as possible. He’d executed targets, framed innocents, sabotaged facilities, interrogated prisoners, lied, cheated, and done anything and everything to see each mission completed; cold-blooded murder wasn’t even a blip on his radar anymore. It shouldn’t have mattered.

And yet.

He was used to being the most dependable person in the room. The Colonel was the real brains of the operation no matter whom he was working with and handed down clear and concise objectives, Krieger had never not in charge of the missions he chose, Lexington worked a different arena, Tunstall had been a gifted tactician in his own somewhat limited scope and had always known exactly what to do when things went to hell, and while Cole had been more software than hardware when it came right down to it (a shot to center mass at that distance, with the target distracted? Bruno would have been embarrassed to die at that kind of sloppy shot if he hadn’t had more important things to worry about at the time) he knew how to put a plan together. If there was a mission, Bruno was there to handle it.

And that’s how he’d been treating this whole situation. Andi was a mission, with her happiness as an objective. He’d ensured her safety in the prison, he’d swept Joe’s and Arena first before she went in, and he’d made sure to taste-test all the (so far uniformly horrible) canned food Zenda’d gotten from places he didn’t like to contemplate. Even now, as he rested his head in his hands he was keeping a covert eye on her; he was pretty sure Zenda had noticed, but was also equally sure no-one else had.

That was the problem at the root of it all, really. He’d been treating Andi as a mission, and not as a grand-daughter. The problem was, “grand daughter” wasn’t a label that came with any parameters. Bruno had never known his grandparents; they’d not approved of his mother’s choice to marry a handsome young soldier - and then had refused to take Bruno in when both his parents had died when Bruno himself was in high school, instead letting the system take him until he looked old enough to sign on with the Marines.

Being a grandfather didn’t come with objectives or a mission statement, and Bruno found himself at sea. He was used to being the person who knew exactly what to do next; whom to shoot and where, what the exit strategy was and what the contingencies were, why people broke under interrogation and what to do to expedite the process, how long it would take reinforcements for either side to arrive or if they were even coming. These were things Bruno knew, deep down in the marrow of him, forty years having carved the knowledge into his bones.

Being a grandfather involved very little of that. In fact, Bruno had his doubts whether the pilots - he still had difficulty believing he was one himself - needed him at all. Going to crazy places with powers you could see and still not believe, pulling maniacal computer programs out of peoples’ heads with magic boxes that fell from somewhere further away than the sky…..against all of that a thorough knowledge of how to strip, clean, and reassemble nearly every firearm under the sun seemed less than useful.

He glanced over at Andi again, where she was sitting against the wall of the bunker humming something under her breath with her eyes unfocused, and something in him solidified. Grandfather may not have mission parameters or an objective, and he might be nothing more than an old dog with older tricks, but he’d be damned if let go of one of the only good things to come out of his life. Until she told him to go, he’d stay and help.

With that thought Bruno stood up and stretched, and went looking for Wells. He needed to research, and the man had been described as a walking encyclopedic knowledge of everything; Bruno couldn’t think of a better place to start.


End file.
